Because of the very simple nature of the human voice, and what its sound means to us, music captures the human experience in a special way that other art forms cannot. If joy is nearly impossible to contrive, then listening to the joyous, excited and unblinkingly forthright celebration and expression of community, faith and gratitude to simply be alive can be a profoundly moving experience, one impractical to resist. Such are the life lessons communicated by Don McGlynn’s Rejoice and Shout, an exhaustively comprehensive documentary about the 200-year musical history of African-American Christianity.

Gospel music is of course informed by the plantation and slavery experience of African-Americans many generations ago, and McGlynn — a filmmaker well-versed in musical documentaries — connects that historical fact to the unbowed spirit of its earliest practitioners and progenitors, while also tracing it all the way forward in time to the emotional, participatory qualities of worship still found in many predominantly African-American churches. Using a wide-ranging roster of interview subjects, from academics like The Gospel Sound author Anthony Heilbut to singers like Ira Tucker, Smokey Robinson, Mavis Staples (above) and more, McGlynn crafts a genre-specific portrait that may be among the most detailed in all of music-related nonfiction film. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Magnolia, unrated, 115 minutes)

Scalene, a recent world premiere at the Dances With Films festival, opens with a jolt, in large part because one doesn’t expect to see Margo Martindale, a veteran character actress with more than 80 credits under her belt, doing physical battle with Hanna Hall, the young Jenny from Forrest Gump, and later costar of Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake. And yet there they are — one with a gun, the other in flight. They scuffle, yell and run about, giving clues of a greater familiarity with one another. Soon we’re winding backwards in time, and learning more about the specifics of just how things went so wrong.

Scalene bills itself as a perceptual thriller, which is a perhaps fancy way of saying it’s a psychological drama that toys with audience sympathies via shifting perspectives. Martindale stars as Janice Trimble, the single mother of Jakob (Adam Scarimbolo), a 26-year-old, live-in mute with other unspecified developmental and/or behavioral disabilities. When she starts quasi-dating divorcee Charles (Jim Dougherty), Janice places a few fliers for a part-time caregiver, and soon-to-graduate college student Paige Alexander (Hall), looking for work to bolster her resume with potential social work further down the line, responds to Janice’s need. Eventually there’s an accusation of rape, which pits the two women against one another.

Scalene unfolds more or less in reverse, actually, with a mediator advising Janice to accept a court-ordered psychiatric hold and multi-year rehabilitation program for Jakob, and the tearful mother swearing that her son is innocent. As director Zack Parker, working from a script co-written with Brandon Owens, navigates back in time, the film juggles two slight and eventually increasingly divided points-of-view in regards to Janice’s treatment of Jakob.

There’s a wonderful ambiguity captured by scenes in which Janice greets Paige curtly, or acts toward Jakob in the same manner in Paige’s presence. The screenplay, though, doesn’t allow Martindale a lot of chances to trade in quiet subtlety, of which she is certainly capable. Certain scenes drag on for too long, though, past the point of conveying either the emotional essence of a given bit, or what’s functionally necessary to advance the narrative. Hall, too, is required to do some silent heavy lifting, and the contrast of her woodenness versus later emoting does the movie no favors.

Scalene is much more interesting when it flexes its ambition some, working to try to also incorporate Jakob’s subjective, jumbled recreated memories — which at one point find his mom recast as a physician, and introduces Paige to him in the doctor’s office, which is different from the reality we’ve seen. For a film that otherwise pivots on the offscreen spaces around a couple distinct, concrete scenes — albeit ones glimpsed from two different points-of-view — these bits are quite intriguing, a wily X-factor in how any given audience member might ultimately interpret Janice’s relationship with her son, and Paige’s accusation. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Along the Tracks/Kachi Films, unrated, 97 minutes)

A Los Angeles-set indie flick which recently enjoyed its world premiere at the 14th annual Dances With Films festival, The Comedian at the Friday offers up an almost serially listless look at an interesting and creative occupation. Instead of getting caught up in the vicarious or behind-the-curtain thrill of even a fringe comedian’s quirky, atypical lifestyle, an audience watching it is much more likely to go through and ultimately bog down in the first half of the seven stages of grief — denial, pain, anger, bargaining, depression, etcetera — than enjoy any sort of fulfilling entertainment, let alone cathartic uplift. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Comedian at the Friday LLC, unrated, 92 minutes)

Based on the British television series of the same name, director Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip finds Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon again playing loose, bickering versions of themselves, uneasy partners on a restaurant-tasting road trip across the British countryside. After some contretemps with his girlfriend, Coogan is left without a partner for his weeklong foodie vacation, so he begrudgingly invites his actor pal Brydon. They then proceed to preen for attention, and spar in competitive, passive-aggressive fashion.

Largely improvised, The Trip is an example of something that probably works a lot better in its short-form incarnation, as an exploration of the cresting nature of comedic riffing. There are moments of pure, unadulterated delight here, in Coogan and Brydon’s arguments over Michael Sheen, or the latter’s hilarious impression of Michael Caine, even modulated to take aging into account. Other impersonations, like the guys’ dueling James Bonds or Woody Allens, are also funny. But the whole is far less than the sum of its parts, and the framework upon which it hangs — which purports to also tangentially assay the insecurity of actors — creaks under the weight of injudicious oversight by Winterbottom and editor Mags Arnold, who overindulge their stars. Like almost any journey, there are a few interesting sights along the way, but this Trip is too long and winding — a scenic route that becomes tedious. (IFC Films, PG-13, 107 minutes)

One need not be a horse enthusiast to appreciate Cindy Meehl‘s richly textured Buck, a profound and moving portrait of channeling misfortune into something positive, and far and away one of the best documentaries of 2011.

Horses are majestic creatures, but known to have their own personalities, which often leads to training practices predicated on harsh punishments. Soft-spoken, middle-aged Buck Brannaman (above), who travels the country more than eight months a year giving clinics to horse owners, preaches compassion and respect, and in doing so underscores how the animal-human relationship is in many ways a metaphor for the challenges of self-betterment, and life itself.

Part of the inspiration for both Robert Redford’s
1998 film The Horse Whisperer, as well as the novel upon which it is based, the
quietly charismatic Brannaman is an endlessly engaging and paradoxical figure — a figure who shuns the sort of attention he naturally draws forth. The delicate illumination of his incredible gift and way with horses is fascinating in and of itself, but Meehl shades her movie with plenty of Brannaman’s personal story, which includes the death of his birth mother and a terribly abusive early childhood. The love of his incredible foster parents, including the wry aphorisms of his mother Shirley (“Blessed are the flexible, for they don’t get bent out of shape”), seem to have penetrated a protective veneer all the way to Brannaman’s core, and serve as a powerful example of the roles that adult care, choice and focus play in overcoming fundamental disadvantages. The feelings Buck elicits linger with one long after viewing. It’s a deeply humanistic film, rendered with grace, compassion and an unfussy aptitude. For an interview with Meehl, click here. (Sundance Select, unrated, 88 minutes)

A lot of Hollywood romantic comedies unfold in worlds that are virtually unrecognizable from the real one, where couples meet in strange fashion and relationships often overlap in messy ways. Writer-director J.C. Khoury’s engaging The Pill, which just enjoyed its world premiere at the 14th annual Dances With Films festival, is thankfully not one of those efforts.

The movie centers around Fred (Noah Bean, Rose Byrne’s murdered fiancé on Damages), a New Yorker who hooks up with the free-spirited Mindy (Rachel Boston, above right), has pleasantly drunken but unfortunately unprotected sex, wakes up, and then spends a madcap day trying to avoid his girlfriend Nelly (Anna Chlumsky) and stick to his one-night stand, in order to make sure she takes the two-installment morning-after pill that will help prevent an unwanted pregnancy. Claiming first that she “knows her body,” and later that the birth control pill is against her religious beliefs (“the one with the Pope”), Mindy is a grab-bag of resistance and whirling dervish energy, keeping Fred on his heels and making his quest mainly a furtive one, under the guise of striking up a more serious relationship. Dragged to a family party, Fred gets to meet Mindy’s parents (Jean Brassard and Lue McWilliams), as well as her engaged younger sister Rose (Gossip Girl‘s Dreama Walker), and ex-boyfriend Jim (Al Thompson). Slowly, Fred finds himself more attracted to Mindy in unexpected ways, complicating his problematic and possibly flickering relationship with Nelly.

The Pill‘s compressed timeline, and its conflict with New York City’s geographical realities, offers some opportunity for pin-prick critical deflation, but there’s a pleasant, forward-leaning energy to the entire film that mitigates this. This isn’t gritty and wildly insightful, or reinventing the wheel, but Khoury is honest about the varied and jumbled emotions of his characters, and lets them make/have made some dubious choices without judging them or bending over backwards to try to explain and justify everything. The Pill is reflective of the realities of the twenty- and even early-thirtysomething dating scene, in which people mean well but often find their attempts at monogamy tested in unexpected ways. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Shoot First Entertainment, unrated, 83 minutes)

An achingly sincere (and achingly familiar), Seattle-set drama of parental bereavement and relationship drift, writer-director Joseph Mitacek’s Morning, which just screened as part of the recently concluded 14th annual Dances With Films festival, is proof that there’s quiet, to-scale reward in plenty of indie cinema, if predominantly for those who don’t mind its gaping, laid-track similarity to so much heartstring-tugging Hollywood studio product.

Morning centers around Michael (Andrew Ramaglia) and Sarah Hade (Emily Cline), a married couple with a two-year-old son, and all of the typical sorts of challenges that come with trying to juggle both home and work. Sarah is going back to school and closing in on a degree, while Michael works on a fishing crew that’s seen better days. His stresses inform a certain boozy detachment and isolation, which in turn further calcifies Sarah’s resentments. Things take a turn for the tragic when Michael falls asleep while babysitting one evening, and their son drowns. Sarah, while understandably grief-stricken, is also additionally racked with a complementary sense of guilt since she stayed out for a drink that night with an old college boyfriend, Alan (Ryan Cooper). In this grey aftermath, the couple struggles with how, and whether, to say together.

Bluntly, Morning is the sort of film that could carve out a certain niche in the commercial marketplace if it had big stars or recognizable faces attached, but as rendered stands virtually no chance of doing so. There’s a legitimately melancholic soul to the movie that holds one’s attention in they’re feeling more or less sympathetic going in. And Ramaglia and particularly Cline offer up game performances. But, beat by beat, almost all of Morning’s arguments and scenes of dramatic intensity feel nipped from some well-worn screenwriter’s playbook of heightened stakes rather than flowing honestly from the characters.

Additionally, Mitacek handles these and other dramatic turns — including the movie’s big battle-to-save-their-drowned-son sequence — so artlessly that the contrivance of each bit is highlighted instead of being smoothly under-stitched. Rather than try to underplay things and get at the root of Michael and Sarah’s personal devastations, and how they overlap but are also different, Mitacek instead repeatedly comes up with ways to foist and inject puffed-up drama into the proceedings — grabs at audience attention that come across as needlessly showy. Loss and terrible pain visits all of us at certain times in our lives, but that doesn’t mean that all movies that try to merely hold up a mirror to that loss are created equal. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (St. Andrews Films, unrated, 86 minutes)

When a film’s press notes or marketing efforts trumpet it as a “metaphysical thriller,” one knows they’re likely in for a bunch of art-school/Psych 101 posturing (read: horseshit) or something nervy, intellectual and oddly appealing, and director Eric Atlan’s arresting French import Mortem is maybe five percent the former but overwhelmingly the latter.

An in-competition title at the 14th annual Dances With Films festival, where it just enjoyed its U.S. premiere, this engaging and strikingly photographed bauble centers on a woman, Jena (Daria Panchenko), who is in an accident and finds herself stuck in a strange motel room, where she becomes locked in a sort of existential game of cat-and-mouse with her soul (Russian-born model Diana Rudychenko). Jena’s one-time and lasting love, Aken (Stany Coppet), also pops up, but for the longest time he is neither able to see Jena’s soul nor help her find passage out of this confinement. As Jena pleads for another chance with Aken, her soul teases her with revelations about his other romantic liaisons, puts a few hot and heavy moves on Jena herself, and eventually dictates to her that her fortune be decided by a deck of cards.

Mortem is kind of desperately French or European in the best sense of that phrase — unabashedly arty and leaning toward the pretentious (“I came out of you,” says Jena’s soul, “and now I exist!”), additionally characterized by an acting style that toes the line between formalized and high emotion. After a brief period of adjustment, the absolute certitude with the film it is rendered and the technical skill and precision with which it is captured, however, make for an fascinating cinematic experience. Atlan, who has a background as a painter, works as his own cinematographer, and the rich, redone black-and-white CinemaScope frames of Mortem give it a sumptuous look that translates in heady, involving fashion into deeper feeling.

Thematically, we’re firmly in Ingmar Bergman territory here, as perhaps refracted through the lens of an Eraserhead-era David Lynch. Fear of death is the big subject, but all of the big life questions — as well as chiefly the friction between heart and head, desire and intellect — inform the sense of generalized anxiety that course through the movie. There’s an erotic, sapphic charge to the scenes in which Jena’s soul puts the moves on her, with Jena alternately succumbing to and recoiling from their abortive love-making. If some of its verbal parrying doesn’t quite match this level of response, resulting in a few scenes of re-tilled emotional ground, Mortem still locates abundant reservoirs of feeling untapped by many far more narratively forthright pictures. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, meanwhile, click here. (Artistic Finances/New Distributors Association, unrated, 94 minutes)

Foreign cinema conjures up a collection of very specific stereotypes, even (perhaps especially) for seasoned film fans. After all, myriad cultural dictates play a huge role in not only what types of movies get made internationally, but which are lauded and/or positioned in a fashion to then penetrate the American cinematic market. Viva Riva!, a flamboyant and sprawling crime picture whose style and plotting recollects movies like City of God and (to a lesser extent) Shottas, is a foreign film that smashes some of these preconceptions of what an African movie is, can or should be.

Plot-wise, Viva Riva! is fairly simple and straightforward, charting the return of native son and small-time hood Riva (Patsha Pay Mukuna, exuding a raw charisma) to Kinshasa, Congo, where he turns a quick score by stealing truckloads of precious, in-demand fuel from his Angolan crime boss, Cesar (Hoji Fortuna). Out to spread some of that cheddar and have a good time at the city’s bars and strip clubs, Riva quickly goes Charlie Brown — which, in this case, is to say he falls under the sway of a red-haired girl, Nora (Manie Malone, above). Problem is, Nora is spoken for, the girlfriend of quasi-ineffectual local criminal kingpin Azor (Diplome Amekindra), a descendent of Congolese kings who keeps his woman under his thumb.

Writer-director Djo Tunda Wa Munga — whose film justifiably scored six African Movie Academy Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design and two Supporting Actor prizes — has a confidence that comes through in virtually every pore of Viva Riva!. His film is marked by a sexual frankness certainly at odds with much of African cinema, but just as striking if not more so is the unfussy, matter-of-fact candor with which the filmmaker treats the insidious reality of sociopolitical corruption in his country, as well as the juxtaposition of impoverished shantytowns with bustling, pulsating nightclubs. Tonally, there’s a certain dispassionate detachment that serves this material surprisingly well, abetted by a top-to-bottom technical polish, including some gorgeous cinematography. For the full, original review, from Shockya, click here. (Music Box Films, R, 96 minutes)

Enough films — mostly horror, but inclusive of all sorts of reunion movies — unfold in and around secluded cabins in the woods that it would probably not at all be a stretch to program a festival comprised entirely of said offerings. A lot of times this setting is the result of writing to a single, accessible, low-budget location, and there isn’t a whole lot of imagination or quality of performance that then raises the material, and argues for either the talent or continued professional opportunity of those involved. Every once in a while, however, there’s a movie that completely punches through the clutter and any sighing downmarket expectations attached to said backdrop. That’s the case with The Corridor, a delightfully unnerving mind-fuck that satisfyingly blends character-rooted fraternal jockeying with elements of psychological horror. A gripping work from start to finish, the movie just enjoyed its west coast premiere as an in-competition title at the just-wrapped Dances With Films festival, and could easily find wider distribution in its future.

Written by Josh MacDonald and directed by Evan Kelly, The Corridor opens with a tense scene in which a rattled, nonsensical Tyler (Stephen Chambers, above) is found by his friends with the body of his mother, Pauline (Mary-Colin Chisholm). When they try to persuade him to drop a knife in his possession, he charges, wounding a couple of them before being subdued. Several months later, after some psychiatric treatment, Tyler and his friends have seemingly reached an uneasy peace, and they decide to accompany him out into the snowy Nova Scotian woods for a guys’ weekend, during which they will dispose of Pauline’s ashes.

The rest of the gang consists of Chris (David Patrick Flemming), who took a knife through the hand in Tyler’s attack; his lumbering cousin Bobcat (Matthew Amyotte, sporting a not entirely convincing skull cap to approximate pattern baldness), who is already married and with kids; book-smart Jim (Glen Matthews), struggling to conceive a baby with his wife; and Ev (James Gilbert, who could easily pass as Bradley Cooper’s younger brother), a would-be musician stuck in a dead-end job where he bangs his boss almost as a favor. The first act unfolds deliberately, with most of the guys keeping a cautious eye on Tyler — who’s still taking medication to suppress any mild schizophrenic tendencies — and old grudges being passively-aggressively raised, under the guise of kidding around.

When Tyler — certain that he’s seen some strange force-field — asks Chris to accompany him into the woods, things take a turn. The rest of the gang trails Chris, concerned for his safety, and everyone is more than a little surprised to discover that Tyler’s tale isn’t merely the product of a splintered mind or troubled imagination. The guys find an odd, shimmering patch of land seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and inside its permeable, barely visible walls a strange calm descends upon each of them. Certain that they can somehow financially exploit this finding, Ev wants to stay and “guard” the mysterious rectangular area. The others return to the cabin, with loose plans to eventually come back and spell Ev. Needless to say, things do not proceed in a smooth and orderly fashion.

Its snowy, holed-up setting and slow-spreading, almost viral madness recalls Dreamcatcher and any number of other movies in which mental unraveling slowly brings about bloodletting, and the exceedingly well stitched-together The Corridor is a movie that is very much about mental illness and the fallibility of moral certitude, whatever its supernatural trappings. Working with cinematographer Christopher Ball, director Kelly creates a compelling film whose smart framing choices and moderate, to-scale special effects work do a fantastic job of conveying its premise, but not tipping overboard into manic silliness. Gore can be great fun, but this is a little movie with an almost perfect balance of violence, tonal creepiness and more naturalized drama. The budgetary limitations obviously constrained certain choices on the part of filmmakers, and the result is bracing and fresh.

Aiding their cause is the fact that the performances here are uniformly superb. In something of a sad but true rarity for an independent work of this nature, each cast member evidences a discrete character with their own special and identifiable interests and motivations while also exhibiting a great and unforced ensemble rapport. The friendships in The Corridor are entirely believable, as are the uneasy reservations that linger in especially the movie’s early scenes. Only a bit, toward the end, does the film overreach, making a mannered play for a visual impression. Still, this a fabulously effective feature debut for Kelly, and a work that bodes well for all of the talent involved, both on screen and behind the camera. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Chronicle Pictures/Last Call Productions/Egg Films, unrated, 100
minutes)

Given the expansive size of the United States, road movies are of course a staple of American independent cinema. One supposes that at a certain time (in the days of Easy Rider, maybe, and certainly before) they were a great way to showcase the sprawling natural beauty of this country, and the wonderful, weird diversity of its citizenry. Now it seems they’re mainly a substitute for the comparative heavy lift of actual dramatic or comedic writing, or an excuse for shoddy, catch-as-catch-can production values. Both of the latter are certainly true of Here’s the Kicker, a messy and roundly unengaging dramedy that recently played as part of the 14th annual Dances With Films festival.

Written by and starring Ian Michaels, the movie centers on Simon Matthews, a one-time football placekicker who’s now stuck working a series of dead-end jobs in Los Angeles. His girlfriend, Brittany Berry (Sarah Smick), is equally adrift, working as a make-up artist in the adult film industry. With little left tying them to the area, Simon and Brittany set out for Texas, with loose plans of visiting both Simon’s pal Teddy (Matthew Linhardt) and Brittany’s dad (Dan Lauria), and eventually opening up a combination saloon-and-salon, in which guys can drink and watch sports while their ladies get their hair done.

Teddy turns out to be a mess, and leaves his wife and daughter, hooking a ride out of town with Simon and Brittany. The trio then stops off at Simon’s parents, where his sister Lacey (Daniella Monet, displaying a bit of sly jailbait sass) is under house arrest and his father Al (Luce Rains) has fallen off the wagon, leaving mother Jeanette (Andrea Helene) frazzled and checked out. Unbeknownst to Brittany, however, Simon has finally gotten a football-related job offer as a college scout. The problem is that would put them back in L.A., so as Simon struggles with how to break this news to the girl whom he wants to wed, what might be charitably described as hijinks ensue.

Here’s the Kicker has so many problems that it’s hard to know where to begin. Simon is presented as an ex-NFL placekicker waylaid by a knee injury, but Michaels evinces neither the physique nor, more crucially, the mindset, countenance and presentation of an athlete. Michaels conveys his legacy in awkward ways, having some people ask Simon for an autograph but also making his alma mater a super-small school that still apparently has all of their games televised. Problematic production design and costume work don’t help, certainly, but that everything about the grander mooring of Simon’s past feels so immediately and viscerally false undercuts the movie right out of the gate, and makes entire sequences laughable for all the wrong reasons.

There are a small handful of amusing ideas or one-liners (Simon proposes “Hair and Balls” as a name for the establishment he and Brittany wish to open), and Michaels, a subpar performer, at least shares a nice chemistry with Smick. But the film’s screenplay is fairly uninspired, leaning heavily on wacky contrivance, and forcing its characters to do stupid things (stopped by a police officer for skipping out on a diner check, the van’s inhabitants decide to eat the contents of a bag of Al’s weed) that make no real sense.

Director Chris Harris, also taking cinematography and editing credits, doesn’t have a lot with which to work, but he doesn’t help matters by staging flat scenes that play out in awkward fashion. Nothing about Here’s the Kicker ever really connects, either comedically or certainly emotionally. Portions of the movie seem to augur a madcap farce, but that tone is never sustained for too long. Football kickers may get no respect as athletes, but watching this film it’s hard to argue that they, or those who portray them, should get any respect at all. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Padded Room Pictures, unrated, 84 minutes)

An in-competition west coast premiere at the 14th annual Dances With Films festival, writer-director Lovinder Gill’s Stalemate is an
unsophisticatedly sweet love triangle that unfolds in inoffensive
fashion, but ultimately just doesn’t have much of interest to say about
women, men or any of the mysterious and oftentimes necessary distance between them.

At the beginning of a particularly important and busy work week, advertising rep Kayleigh (Sheetal Sheth) tells long-time boyfriend Rich (Burgess Jenkins) that she wants a bit of a break, and doesn’t want to see him again until Friday, which is her birthday. Working up a promotional campaign for a minor league baseball team set to soon move into a new stadium, Kayleigh finds herself paired up with an outside contractor, the amiable Art (Josh Randall). He immediately loosens her up, dragging Kayleigh out of her (strangely deserted) office for a series of working lunches and dinners that slowly morph into something approaching dates. By the time Friday comes, and then that weekend, Kayleigh is on the verge of a full-blown existential crisis, torn between the two men in her life — one old and one new.

Set and filmed on location in Winston Salem, North Carolina, Stalemate wrings a bit of production value out of the (real) construction site of a local baseball stadium, but is otherwise flatly staged and shot. Most of its problems, however, relate directly to the material. Screen romances and love triangles need not be hopelessly complicated, or littered with ridiculous, unrealistic and over-the-top problems keeping boy and girl apart; witness the simple beauty of something like the heartrending Once, from a few years back. But Gill’s movie is thinly drawn (Kayleigh is stuffy and uptight because she has a Mercedes, nice furniture in her office, and works inside; Art is an appealing free spirit because he drives a Jeep, eats hot dogs, likes the outdoors and also plays guitar), and, while admirably adding some much-needed three-dimensionality to Rich as the film wears on, lacking in much insight or quality drama about what’s driven a wedge between the couple to begin with.

It also strikes an overall false chord by having Art object in pouty fashion to Kayleigh’s eventually stated desire to date both men for a while. Rich’s opposition is understandable, given their three-year history, but if there’s anything that the history of humankind has taught us, it’s that guys are cool with the potential for no-strings-attached sex, if that’s what a lady is offering. So when the men get together and talk, and then decide to jointly put an ultimatum to Kayleigh, it’s one of those bullshit cinematic fantasies, in which (predominantly) guys exorcise some demons about how they were romantically strung along in their formative years. Compounding all the falsity and awkwardness is the completely needless compression of time. Art’s a nice guy, yes, but four (chaste, part-time) days does not a grand love affair make.

Stalemate may not ultimately work, but what it does have going for it is Sheth, a knockout beauty whose eyes could and probably should be classified as weapons of mass distraction. Jenkins comes across as pretty shallow, an Abercrombie & Fitch himbo model, while Randall at least conveys a loose-limbed charisma that makes his scenes passably engaging. Sheth, however, gives Stalemate a soul, because even if she’s not given much with which to work, she both communicates romantic ambivalence and reminds viewers of that libidinal surge attached to flirtation and blooming attraction. In another era, she would have been a great silent film superstar; as is, head shots of her could likely be used as a major time-saver in therapy, to hypnotize patients. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Stalemate Productions, unrated, 89 minutes)

One of the common pitfalls of independent film comes by way of the navel-gazing that, perhaps somewhat understandably, a hard-grinding life of either on-the-fringe or upwardly mobile artistic endeavor engenders and encourages. Movies about would-be filmmakers or struggling actors and other artists are of course neither automatically good nor bad, but do often lose themselves in a thicket of puffed-up self-importance, mistaking their impediments and human efforts as somehow automatically more interesting than that of the so-called common man, and thus requiring of less dramatic lift.

Philadelphia-based filmmaker Jose Cruz, Jr.’s Close-Up falls victim to this problem, blending together the story of a couple of wayward, aspirant actors with an even more pedestrian drama about recovery, since the film’s main characters also happen to be recently on-the-wagon recuperating alcoholics. Shaun Paul Costello plays a guy hanging onto his three months of sobriety by the thinnest of margins; his wife (Jacqueline Schneider) is in the process of divorcing him and threatening to move off with their young daughter, no matter that he’s landed a job as a mechanic with a pal (Brian Gallagher), and is also consistently in touch with his sponsor (Brian Anthony Wilson). The audition circuit is tough, but this lonely guy finally lands a friend in the chirpy, flirty cousin of his sponsor, a girl he dubs “Free Bird” (Valentina Mohle). She calls him “Straggler,” meanwhile, and since this is something that characters in movies do, these nicknames stick — the only monikers of affiliation the audience is afforded for the leads.

An in-competition entry and west coast premiere at the recent Dances With Films festival, Close-Up has a certain technical proficience, or at least a solid scheme — comprised of handheld camerawork, and a lack of precious staging — that feeds its tone, and meandering narrative aims. But as a writer, Cruz seems to just be throwing bits and pieces of every sort of dramatic scenario at a wall, and hoping it somehow sticks in compelling fashion. Straggler’s desperate desire to reconnect with his daughter goes out the window after he gives her a Christmas gift, and Free Bird’s imminent departure is so undiscussed that one could be forgiven for forgetting it completely. The movie also only fitfully engages with the themes of addiction and recovery. Inclusive of its very on-the-nose dialogue, everything about Close-Up‘s dramatic conflict is perfunctory and uninspired, and there are false little details too (people drinking in the background at a party at the home of a recovering addict?) that become distracting, and derail certain scenes.

The performances here are functional — think of Costello as a sort of poor man’s Channing Tatum, early in his career — but far from gripping or involving, and Mohle in particular begins to grate after a short while. Sadly, no one in Close-Up (apart from Alan Ruck and Ryan Dunn, who pop up in small cameos) is really ready for their own close-up. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Cruz Control Pictures, unrated, 85 minutes)

An in-competition title at the ongoing 14th annual Dances With Films festival, The Aristocrat tells the story of a traveling salesman who’s spending his final few weeks on the job breaking in his callow, cocksure replacement. A character-based small business drama that eventually morphs into a sort of low-fi back-stabbing thriller, the movie lacks the slickness, skill or psychological perspicacity to deliver on any of its twists or turns.

Set in the late 1980s, and shot on location in Massachusetts, The Aristocrat centers on an aging salesman, Marc Ward (Jeff Gill), who seems worn down and resigned to the fact that he’s basically little more than a human catalogue. Former shoe salesman Eddie Kent (Adam Soule), however, is convinced that he can land big commissions in this new job, so he immediately starts applying his own brand of snake oil charm and pressure in the follow-up meetings on which Marc brings him along. This rubs a couple clients the wrong way, and also upsets things with a woman, Becca (Megahn Perry, an utter delight), with whom Marc has been carrying on a casual, months-long, quite chaste flirtation at a local diner. (This is of course begs the question of exactly what sort of traveling salesman decamps and works mainly one area for many weeks out of a six-month period, but nevermind.)

Eddie’s aggressive, chatty ways finally seemingly pay off with a big-fish client (Paxton Whitehead), and it’s not long before the pair run into an old acquaintance of Eddie’s, an enterprising antiques dealer named Charlie (Gary Henoch). While another job opportunity presents itself, Charlie’s work seems to interest Marc more than even the completion of the rest of his working days, setting the scene for a series of decisions with long-stretching ramifications.

At times, especially early on, The
Aristocrat feels like it could be partially based on some lost, early David Mamet manuscript, which is most assuredly a compliment. There’s a snap to the dialogue without it being ostentatious, and the grooves of generational conflict are nicely laid out, with small glances here and pinprick asides there. Other details seem yawningly under-developed though; Marc is supposedly a salesman in the semi-conductor business, but apart from one backdrop and some willfully vague chatter in a business meeting, this detail is completely unexploited, either literally or metaphorically. Marc and Eddie might as well be peddling Garden Weasels, for all it matters. More problematically, though, a general feeling of static constipation eventually gives way to a fumbling third act that is less narrative overreach than just bumbled execution. For more information on the movie, click here. (Three Times Productions, unrated, 93 minutes)

An Australian, college-set love triangle drama studded with a few supernatural elements, Charge Over You, which just had its U.S. premiere as part of the 14th annual Dances With Films festival, is an earnest, low-budget freshman effort, marked by all the sorts of sincerity and shortcoming which that tag frequently implies.

The plot centers around college student Sarah (freshfaced newcomer Danya Cox), who slips into a seemingly irretrievable funk after witnessing a fellow student pass away. That death, you see, brings back memories of Sarah’s dear, beloved and also recently departed mother, whose death she hasn’t really been able to discuss with her father (Ray Croft). Her teacher (Jacqui Hall) warns Sarah, an aspirant doctor, that she’s in danger of losing her scholarship if she doesn’t buckle down and commit to a “Logic 201” term paper on a creation myth subject (!), but Sarah lets herself be continually led astray, first by Dane (James Lee) — a blond, wraith-like, slightly menacing figure who seems to have stepped out of either the Twilight or Harry Potter franchises, possibly both — and then by UCLA transfer student Mike (Dominic Deutscher), a sort of Central Casting nice guy. Observing all of these goings-on from friendship alley, meanwhile, is Sam (Brenton Thwaites), a bespectacled, wishy-washy do-gooder who’s always encouraging Sarah to study and do her work.

Without truly giving much of anything away, Charge Over You, written by Julia Matthews and directed by Regardt Steenekamp, bears all the hallmarks of a slice of adolescent tortured psyche/imaginary friend cinema, mainly since Dane keeps popping up in Sarah’s room unannounced. Rather than freak her out, however, she always blithely accepts his repeated excuse that her “door was open.” In essence, the movie tips its hand far too early. There’s no suspense or drama or worry about Sarah’s corporeal safety. Dane is obviously less a real character than a figure/device, so the movie unfolds as an exercise of time-whiling, waiting to see exactly how he is outed, and what the motivations might be.

The performances help all of this go down at least a bit more smoothly. Whereas so many young American actors — be it because of television training or myriad other factors — would amp up the emoting and deploy stressed, declarative speech rhythms, the Australian actors here (with the exception of the creepy Lee, who’s acting on advice of counsel one supposes, and in his own separate movie) trade in slightly more restrained and realistic strokes, making for some pleasant, unforced moments of getting-to-know-you (nonsexual) connection between Cox and Deutscher. Unfortunately, Sarah isn’t a proactive enough character, and the material as a whole just isn’t sketched out deeply enough to get its hooks in an audience. But the solid if unspectacular technical credits and narrative reach for something a bit beyond the norm make this a modest and entirely forgivable failure — the sort of calling card first feature film of which its makers need not be overly embarrassed. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Triumphal Pictures, unrated, 84 minutes)

A West Coast premiere as part of the unfolding 14th annual Dances With Films festival, Sweet Little Lies is a nicely photographed misfits’ road movie in which a kid and adult both experience some unlikely maturation.

Bess (Caitlin Kinnunen) is a rebellious trailer park teenager who’s just lost her mother. With only a faded photograph, old address and the story that her estranged father might be working in Las Vegas as an Elvis impersonator, she corrals her younger friend Waldo (Joseph Montes), and alights from Kansas, setting off for points west in the stolen car of Waldo’s half-brother, Paulino (Pedro Pascal). With little money, their quest is soon foundering, but fate brings the pair together with Roach (Bill Sage), a rakish conman who’s just nabbed the wedding ring off his mother’s hand at her funeral.

The trio doesn’t immediately hit it off, and Roach doesn’t seem the paternal or avuncular type anyway. But they eventually reconnect in Las Vegas, where Roach saves Bess and Waldo from Randy (Jesse Lenat), a street singer out to exploit them. With Paulino and social worker Jennifer (Natasha Williams) in pursuit, both Bess and Roach try to bring some order to their upturned lives.

Writer James Windeler’s script was several years ago a semifinalist in the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship contest, overseen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and it’s easy to see why. There’s a certain sweetness and innocence that emanates forth from the movie, embodied in a collection of imaginary wire figures with which Waldo plays (captured in animated form by Duncan Raitt), but also the slapdash manner in which Bess and Waldo escape various jams. While these obstacles flow sensibly and realistically from the actual narrative, there’s no real sense of danger here. This isn’t so much a damning criticism as just a factual assessment of tone.

Sweet Little Lies is wide-eyed and open-hearted; it takes place in a world walled off from cynicism, complexity and fear, in which simple, direct courses of action (be it Bess’ quest to find her dad or Roach’s attempt to procure an engagement ring for his long-suffering girlfriend) are viewed as being able to solve all problems. The audience may know beforehand these things not to be true, but the characters themselves do not. They are naive, but honest and forthright in their yearnings and intentions.

Director William J. Saunders and cinematographer Edward Blythe do a good job of working with available light, and capturing some nice evocative images, as with a desert campfire reflected in the wheel rims of Bess and Waldo’s stolen red car. While many road movies incorporate the outdoors in only perfunctory fashion, the open road and dusty southwest seem a real, believably interwoven part of Sweet Little Lies.

On the flipside, the movie’s staging and editing during moments of panicked getaway and action is far less convincing. The film is best when it stays away from air-quote thrills and hijinks, and just sticks to a more straightforward narrative, with the kids siphoning gas or otherwise devising schemes to help put them one step closer to their goals. In the end, there aren’t really any big answers in Sweet Little Lies, and its ending stretches credibility in the name of peachy-keen, all-is-well settledness. Still, life is an open road, and the lies this sweet-natured indie film tells say much about the gulf between adulthood and the youthful innocence we tend to leave behind. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Anywhere Films, unrated, 80 minutes)

A world premiere, in-competition title at the 14th annual Dances With Films festival, Trophy Kids is that rare independent film that turns its lens on the moviemaking process itself, and doesn’t morph into a self-congratulating circle jerk of air-quote misunderstood artistic grievance. Instead, it’s ambitious and playful, flirty and mysterious, puffed-up and yet also nervous and candid about its ambivalence and uncertainty toward storytelling form, and what makes a film a true work of art. In short, it’s the sort of indie movie that, well, gives indie movies a good name.

Co-written and produced by Brandon Yankowitz and director Josh Sugarman, the film takes its name from the coddled millennial generation (loosely defined as those born after 1975) whose every little action is applauded and rewarded. Max (Ryan Eggold, sort of the physical embodiment of Adrien Brody by way of Justin Chatwin) is a listless, seemingly shallow nightclub owner/party promoter who’s living well in New York City in no small part to the financial underwriting of his parents, who operate an unusual online university. Playwright Reid (David Gallagher, late of 7th Heaven) is a somber young guy, serious about his art and seriously broke at least in part as a result of that passion. While crashing with a friend, Reid meets Quinn (Australian-born Tahyna Tozzi), who conceals from him the fact that she’s a department store heiress.

Later, when Max gets it in his head to become a movie producer and make a film about his own life, he enlists the help of Quinn, who in turn turns to Reid. Quinn pitches Reid as a unique talent, and urges him to take the script-for-hire assignment from Max — which also involves moving in with him — so that he can get a place of his own and better fund his art. Slowly, Max is revealed to be a bit different than Reid first thought, and his contemptuousness evaporates. When Max keeps delaying in paying him and Reid also finds out about Quinn’s (white?) lie, however, he becomes both suspicious and angry. Will all his work for Max turn out to have been for nothing?

In its own to-scale fashion, Trophy Kids manages to be audacious without being ostentatious. Sugarman and Yankowitz open their movie on a scene of heightened drama and then rewind the narrative, working back to this point in a sly fashion that reframes its meaning. Throughout the film, there are subtle shifts in perspective which at first seem lazy or incongruous, but ultimately underscore different characters’ views of moviemaking and storytelling.

Fine work by cinematographer Austin Schmidt abets this cause, as do some solid performances. Gallagher ably captures the artistic restlessness of a guy who thinks he’s smarter than everyone around him, and doesn’t understand why that in and of itself isn’t enough to secure his future. But it’s Eggold, watchable and effortlessly charismatic, who takes Max from callow and untested to something verging on mature. He looks like he stepped out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue, sure, but there’s a sly and unexpectedly pleasant depth to his performance.

Trophy Kids isn’t fully dazzling as some sort of dizzying, deconstructionist cinematic treatise; it has its mind set firmly on entertainment as well. To this end, there is a considerable loosening of intrigue and hold in the third act. Yankowitz and Sugarman seem to have had an end point for their story, but no clear road map for how to get there from its big second-act pivot. Still, like New Suit, The Blue Tooth Virgin and The Scenesters — a trio of other shaggy, affectionate, low-budget indie releases that each in their own way had fun creating a mixed fruit salad of genre elements and inside-Hollywood noodling — it’s original, striving and kind of darkly playful, a combination of qualities sorely lacking in American independent cinema at the moment. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, meanwhile, click here. (Yasu Media, unrated, 104 minutes)

An in-competition title at the ongoing Dances With Films festival, gritty indie film Less examines the intra-personal struggles of a recently homeless man, and the woman who awkwardly attempts to come to his rescue.

While mental illness has a lot to do with the situations of many homeless individuals, San Francisco’s Finn (co-writer Zak Barnett, who also nabs a co-directing credit) has, for his own dark reasons, actually chosen to live on the street. He wants to dramatically change his perspective and unburden himself of what he feels are the entanglements of possessions, but after several months the rough conditions seem to have taken a toll on his mental health as well. When the audience meets him, Finn is busy taking Polaroids of inanimate objects (manhole covers, parking meters, trash cans) and then attaching said photographs to them. He also engages passersby in weird, fitful fashion, and occasionally hands out change to strangers instead of asking for it.

Mia (Rebecca Noon, above left), mousy and unhappy, works at a small cafe near where Finn hangs out, and one day sees a randomly posted Polaroid in which he has declared himself “invisible.” She attempts to interact with him and Finn finally relents, accepting an invitation to come home with Mia for dinner. The next morning, though, Finn is back out on the street, where he eventually crosses paths with Gunther (Lew Levinson), a fellow homeless guy who convinces him to perform a strange bit of street theater. While Mia tries to understand why Finn — seemingly intelligent and not insane — won’t more fully engage with her, Finn tries to reconcile the still-raw hurt of his recent past and his desire to remain aloof with this strange new woman who keeps extending her hand in friendship, and more.

A little of Less goes a long way, even at a lean, sinewy 77 minutes. Directed and photographed by Gabriel Diamond, the movie has the gritty, defiant personality of much outsider cinema; it relishes the distance between its uncommunicative putative protagonist and the audience, because that distance is a correlative emotional placeholder for all the very same societal engagement and connection that Finn is consciously rejecting. It’s a shame, then, that the character of Mia isn’t more convincingly developed. If her unhappiness and isolation were acute and full-bodied (there are two thinly sketched scenes of her at work interacting with her manager, and one of her alone at home), viewers would have an appreciation for her desperate connection to Finn, and might be more forgiving of some of Less‘ dawdling.

The acting here is quite solid, if not of the knockout variety. Diamond, trading in close-ups and unique framing, is interested in highlighting what he views as the core emotions of scenes without necessarily doing the narrative lifting to get his characters to that point. Barnett, who resembles a scuffed-up Josh Duhamel, ably communicates Finn’s standoffishness, and loosening grip on what could be loosely characterized as society’s reality. With his piercing eyes, one gets a sense of his fractured psyche in a way that flashbacks and voiceover later rather needlessly flesh out. Noon — who looks a bit like a theoretical younger sister of Miranda July, and perhaps could have drifted in from one of her movies — is lovely as a wounded bird. It’s just that the joint repair Less proposes for these two damaged souls isn’t quite as convincing as its makers would have us believe. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Outside Films, unrated, 77 minutes)